Chapter Three: Phantom Static

The screen was dead.

So was every lead.

Adrian stared at the smoking laptop like it had just spoken his true name and choked on it. The flash drive lay in the middle of the desk, still warm, metal casing scorched. Data vaporized in seconds.

“Someone was watching,” Sera whispered.

“No,” he said flatly. “Someone was waiting.”

He grabbed the drive, wrapped it in a napkin from the mini bar, and locked it in the office safe. Evidence or not, he wasn’t ready to destroy it.

“Are there any backups?” she asked.

He gave a hollow laugh. “I kept the only copy off-network. Thought it was safe.”

“You thought wrong.”

He looked at her then. Really looked.

Sera’s hair was falling out of its clip, her lipstick faded, eyes red from too many shocks in too little time. But she stood tall. Fierce. Beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with grace and everything to do with her refusal to flinch.

And for the first time in years, he felt something stir in his chest that wasn’t ice.

Guilt.

“You were in that file too,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“They did something to you.”

“I know that too.”

“And your brother…” His voice trailed off.

She nodded. “I think they killed him to keep you alive.”

The silence between them was immediate and unbearable.

He turned away.

He couldn't look her in the eyes not if that was true.

Watching Adrian Cain come undone was like watching a glacier crack in real time. No tears. No shouting. Just quiet devastation in every movement. As if grief was a process too loud for someone like him.

She wanted to scream.

For Aaron. For the little girl she’d been, waiting every night for her brother to come home.

Instead, she reached into her bag and pulled out a small, battered photo.

Aaron and Daniel together, in the woods behind her house. Both boys were grinning, blurry, arms slung over each other's shoulders.

“You were friends,” she said. “He tried to help you escape. And they punished you both.”

Adrian looked at the photo. His hand trembled as he touched the edge of it. For a moment, his jaw clenched, like he was holding back some terrible wave.

Then he whispered something so quiet, she almost missed it.

“...He called me Danny.”

Her throat tightened. “Yes. He did.”

He touched the photo again.

And then

A sound cracked in his head.

A whisper.

“Danny, run!”

His eyes slammed shut. A flash blinding. Pain. Fire. Screaming. Metal restraints. A girl crying.

Sera’s voice broke through.

“Adrian ”

“No,” he whispered, “not Adrian. Danny. My name was Danny.”

He looked up, and this time his eyes weren’t just cold they were shattered.

He remembered.

A sharp knock at the office door.

Adrian turned.

“Who is it?” he called.

No answer.

Another knock.

Harder.

He walked to the door and opened it.

No one.

Just an envelope on the ground.

Sera picked it up, opened it.

Inside one Polaroid photo.

Of her, asleep in her apartment.

From last night.

On the back, written in red ink:

“Get out of his head, or I’ll put a bullet in yours.”

The photo shook in her hands, but she held it like evidence in a murder trial.

Because that’s what it was.

A threat.

She’d been watched. In her own bed. Her apartment. Her safe zone.

She didn’t even remember closing the curtains last night. Had she? Could she have?

The skin on the back of her neck crawled.

“Let me see it,” Adrian said.

She handed it over.

He looked at the image, jaw ticking as the muscles in his face locked tight. The man who’d been cold, unreadable, untouchable just hours ago now looked one step away from violent.

Not toward her.

For her.

“They got inside your apartment,” he said darkly. “Which means they either have access to your building’s security system ”

“Or my phone’s been cloned,” she finished, realization hitting like a gut punch. “Which means they know everything. Calls. Notes. Files. Photos.”

“They’re not just watching,” he said. “They’re circling.”

She swallowed hard. “Why now?”

“Because I remembered my name,” he said. “And someone just realized they’re losing control.”

He handed the photo back to her, then looked straight into her eyes. “You’re not going home tonight.”

Sera blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You’ll stay here. Upstairs. My penthouse has encrypted locks, round-the-clock surveillance, and six inches of reinforced steel between you and anyone stupid enough to try something.”

“Wow. Romantic,” she said dryly.

“I’m not protecting you out of romance,” he said. “I’m doing it because if you die, so does every truth I’ve been trying to claw back.”

And still… she didn’t move.

Because part of her wanted to trust him.

And the other part remembered the way he’d looked at that photo like anyone who threatened her had just signed a death sentence.

“I’m not a damsel,” she said, voice quiet.

“I know,” he said. “But even queens need a safe place to sleep.”

She said yes without saying it.

Didn’t argue when he sent a car to her apartment building to gather essentials. Didn’t flinch when he handed her a secure phone with a scrambled line.

But when the elevator doors opened to his penthouse she hesitated.

He watched her eyes scan the space: tall glass walls, concrete floors, matte black furniture. Not a single personal item in sight.

“It’s like you decorated using an AI trained on power and loneliness,” she muttered.

He almost smiled. Almost.

“I’ve never brought anyone here,” he said.

She turned to him, surprised.

“Ever,” he added.

“Not even dates?”

“No one,” he said. “This place is where I sleep. It’s not meant to be… lived in.”

“Well,” she sighed, “tonight it’s going to feel a lot like hiding.”

She walked past him, toward the guest room. But before she disappeared down the hallway, she looked over her shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said. Quietly. Honestly.

He said nothing.

He just stood there, watching her walk away like she might vanish again if he blinked.

Like she already had once.

Night falls.

The city lights rise around them. But inside, the past is rising faster.

In his room, Adrian lies awake staring at the ceiling.

In hers, Sera turns over a photo of Aaron and Daniel two boys who were never supposed to be remembered.

And outside…

A black car parks across the street from CainTech.

Inside it, a man in a suit speaks into a phone.

“She’s with him. The merge has begun.”

A voice replies on the line:

“Then proceed to Phase Three. The more he remembers, the faster he fractures.”

Back inside the penthouse, Sera opens her overnight bag.

Finds her clothes. Her toothbrush.

And a note she didn’t pack.

Just four words, written in black marker on the back of her hairbrush:

“He killed your brother.”